And I Hear You Calling in the Dead of Night
by scriberevivere
Summary: The birds were chirping in the white birch. In the clear blue sky, light was fading to grey as the moon rose. The woods, which had once been part of Mr. H. K. Jenson's family farm, were now as wild as the people inhabiting them. And in the woods, removed from the road, light shone from between the trees and someone screamed.
1. Chapter 1

_The birds were chirping in the white birch. The swallows flitting from branch to branch, their tiny heads cocked to the side chirped and chittered. In the clear blue sky, light was fading to grey as the moon rose. The world had gone to hell around them, and yet here they were, going on._

_ The woods, which had once been part of Mr. H. K. Jenson's family farm, were now as wild as the people inhabiting them. And in the woods, removed from the road, light shone from between the trees and someone screamed. _

She squeezed her eyes shut, praying that somehow she would tap her heels together and be anywhere but here. His fingers, blunt and greasy, skimmed her chest as he unbuttoned her shirt. She shivered, swinging slightly. The quick-ties round her wrists, which had been chafing before, burned now. In the falling dark she could only see faint shapes and shadows of trees. Even so, she could hear the other man was talking, getting closer.

The shorter one was standing beneath her, the taller one, the mastermind [although she was using that term on a relative scale], was advancing, his heavy footfalls cracking twigs and crushing leaves. The dark and her throbbing head mean what she could see was blurry and out of focus. Still she could see his outline approaching. He stopped in front of, but slightly to the left of her. He rocked back on his heels and then leaned forward. The action brought his sunburnt face came into view. He was fat, or had been fat. Now his skin hung unpleasantly loose, swaying slightly as he stepped towards her. The short one looked up at her face. She bit back another scream, he was leering, displaying his missing two front teeth. He wheezed, pulling her shirt off her shoulders. She tried to focus on something other than his arms circling her, pulling on the clasp of her bra. Her brain stuttered and came to a halt.

This was about to happen, she was going to be one of those girls, who gets found in the forest in Bones by some unsuspecting picnickers. Well, she would have been one of those girls if the world hadn't gone batshit nuts. Now, it was commonplace to see grisly skeletons, the type that haunt crime scenes and nightmares, walking the streets.

The short one had a hang nail, she could tell because he kept snagging the blue lace of the strap. She whimpered as he pressed closer to her, fiddling with the clasp. She tried to disconnect, this was her mortal shell, she was ether, she was ephemeral she was, oh god, she was about to die. The trees blurred as her vision tunneled. Something incongruously bright centered her. A blue heeled oxford was laying on the pine needles a yard away. When had she lost her shoe? Thinking back to that afternoon made her head ache. She already knew the hair was sticking to her head, matted with congealed blood. Perhaps she had some sort of subdural hematoma, in a second she would go into shock. That would show her two would-be rapists to slam peoples' heads against the foliage. Thinking about the attack made her seethe with anger, she had been so stupid!

The other one, the one with more teeth, had grabbed her from behind. God when was she going to stop being so trusting. When the first one, the short one, had asked if she'd seen his daughter she had been suspicious, but he'd look so sad. She had figured it would only take a second, and maybe she had seen the girl. The photo had been torn and filthy but the little girl couldn't have been more than seven, with a wide gap-toothed smile. She had been so focused on the picture she hadn't heard the tall one come up behind her. Like any city girl she had tried to knee him in the groin. That must have been when she lost her shoe. Her ribs felt tender, maybe bruised, that too was from when he grabbed her. Looking up from the shoe she noticed a dark stain on the bark of the white birch where her head had hit the knot in the tree. It looked like someone had shot the trunk. She snorted, _"It was in the clove of the seasons, summer was dead but autumn had not yet been born, that the ibis lit in the bleeding tree"._ How droll, she was an ibis, blown far off corse, away from home, caught in a tree. The man must have heard her snort because he looked up. The breeze on her back alerted her to the inevitable, somehow the man, probably only one evolutionary step above an Australopithecus, had managed the clasp on her bra. She gasped and let out a choked, halting breath.

"don't cry girly." He ran his fingers over cheek, catching on the swell of her mouth. He ran the pad of his thumb over her bottom lip, pulling it down. She began to tremble in ernest. He leant forward, his oily lips against hers. He sucked on her bottom lip, and she bit him, the force required to surge forward made her wrists scream and the world spin, but his profane exclamation was reward enough.

"bitch bit me! Marvin, did you see that, the little bitch bit me."The man, holding his hand to his lip, backed away. Marvin cackled. She could see him moving forward, his face sickly pale and cruel. The deep shadows around his eyes were in sharp relief by the rising moon, making him look like death its self.

"feisty aint ya?" he smirked,"I told you Frank, all these little trumped up 'career women' , just a bunch of city whores. Love nothing better than to get a man by the balls. They get off on it, ya know. But once we show 'er how to treat a man proper, this 'un could be fun." he spit a stream of feted tobacco from the corner of his mouth. Swiping the back of his hand against his chin, Marvin grabbed her chin,

"what do you think girly?"

"I'd rather get bit!" She snarled, and working up her final reserves of courage, spit in his face.

Marvin raised his eyebrows, and used the corner of her shirt to wipe his face. Then he winked at her,

"oh, I can do rough if that's what you're into."

She jerked back, pulling her chin out of his reach.

"I'll scream." she was shivering now, cold and fear and a creeping sense of inevitability were setting in.

"Why'd ya wanna do that for, huh?" Marvin grabbed her hair, wrapping it round his hand to stop her swinging away.

"Told you," She panted, "I would literally rather be eaten alive by the walking dead, than get fucked by an impotent redneck." The look in his eyes told her she had gone too far, but what did it matter, her big mouth had always gotten her in trouble, why should this time be any different. Frank's sickly pallor was replaced with the blotchy red of anger.

He grabbed the back of her neck, holding her to him and grinding against her hip obscenely. She screamed. She regretted an instant later.

Someone had just emerged from out of the woods. Someone alive by the looks of it.

"Frank!" Marvin yelled, all thoughts of caution and machismo thrown aside as he warbled out a tremulous cry.

"Deal with it Marvin, gonna show this bitch what it's like to ghet brok'n in" Frank palmed her breast, moving the bra out of the way. He leaned forward to whisper in her ear,

"bit small, but I'll make due"

"Make due with this!" She kneed Frank in the groin and watched him double up and fall backwards. Not her best one line, but her brain was still quite addled and Marvin was making an odd gargling noise. He stumbled as if he was drunk then fell to the ground. There was a sharpened stick running through his neck, which, she assumed, accounted for the gargling noise.

Before Frank hit the ground, the man was on him. There was a sickening crack, just the the one her wrist had made when she was eleven and riding her bike in the rain. Frank dropped, now just dead weight. The man straightened up, flicking his eyes up and down her still suspended body.

"Howdy Darlin' how's it hangin'"

She chuckled, then blanched,

"Pleasure to meet you, I'm going to be sick"

"I get that reaction a lot" he muttered, cutting her down just in time. Unfortunately, her wrists, chafed and tingling with restored blood flow, didn't hold, and a day that had begun with such promise ended with her face down in her own sick.

* * *

Don't own any of it-please don't sue me, I am very very poor and comics are very very expensive-hence, in part, the poverty.

I love the dynamics and conflict of The Walking Dead, I was, like the majority of the fandom, entranced by Daryl Dixon, our squirrel slinging Lancelot. I would love to see him interact in a romantic setting, partly because I feel he would be so bad at it. A bit AU, bit OOC. I do not like Carol (due to the comics) so she will be a portrayed more negatively here. Don't know when I will update, with SATs, APs and Subjects, things are nuts. May follow the show, may follow the comic, may throw caution to the winds and go nuts...we shall see

I love you for getting this far, you are my hero! And yes, the title is shamelessly from Bastille- Overjoyed


	2. Chapter 2

She was cute, in a sort of school teacher, porno librarian way. All he could see was her pert ass and some very tangled brown curls. Still, he assumed she would be cute, if she wasn't covered in mud, dust, blood and vomit.

"Up yea ghet girley" He grabbed her elbow, pulling her to her feet. _Damn_, she was just pushing five foot, like really really tiny. And only in slacks and her bra, huh, would ya look at that.

"Merle Dixon"

" Gwenhwyfar Cordelia Aberdeen PhD."

He chuckled, "Big name for a little lady."

"diminutive physically, but expansive linguistically, as my mother used to say."

His lip curled, "She sounds..."

Gwenhwyfar Cordelia Aberdeen's smile was so wide it almost looked painful, "Excellent professor of classics, terrible Mother."

She whipped her hands on her slacks, then proffered her left

"Thank you Merle, may I call you Merle? Thank you for saving my life. This is rather rude, but before I get to comfortable with the idea of surviving till morning, you don't have any intention of killing, eating, raping, or dismembering me or any combination or permutation there in, do you?"

Merle almost laughed, "Nah, 'sides, if I was gonna, I wouldn'a let ya run yer trap so much." She giggled and nodded, her snarled hair bouncing up and down. She almost looked comical, so small and spunky, covered in filth.

In a past life, and not that he's proud of this, but he would have thought about it. Not the eating or dismembering or nothin', and not the rapin' either. More along the lines of physical persuasion. She was tiny, and just standin there in 'er bra and pants, and well, it wouldn't take much effort to just finish the job.

That was before. On his way through the woods, he'd seen two girls. One dead, starved, then gutted. The other, well that was somethin' that would stay with him till he died. Someone had stripped her, and must'a lashed her between two saplings. They had cut her hair, cause there were great blond hunks of the stuff lyin' 'round. She'd been raped, that much had been obvious, and cut too. The worst thought, what would haunt him, was that the sapplings had been pulled together, had been cut free from each other, but not her arms. From the look of all the blood, she may have been alive, when they'd let her get ripped to peaces.

Oh, he was still an evil bastard, he knew that much. He had left his only family in the world, and had spent the better part of The End of the World out of his mind on drugs. Still, God, or luck or some unnamed force had let him escape the roof. He had sworn then, that he would do what he hadn't done before, what he had failed to do when he had been young and angry and full of self righteous anger. Truth be told, and he would never own up to this, but he had half hoped the scream came from sugartits, Andrea, or her snot nosed sister, or the bedraggled one, Carol. Even so, it could have been worse.

He was almost certain that the men he'd killed, were then men who had strung up blondie. Looking down at Gwenhwyfar Cordelia Aberdeen, he wondered if she too would have been trussed and killed. He wasn't much for the white knight roll, but her was glad he had heard her screams, if nothing else, she was amusing.

She smiled and wobbled unsteadily, seemingly unbothered or apathetic to his self reflective silence. Walking a few feet to pick up a ridiculous looking high heel. She swayed, arm's flailing. He was waiting for her to burst into tears. No one could go through that and come out right as rain, no one who was normal anyway. He didn't really want to be around when she lost it, crying girls weren't really his thing. Still, after he had left the do-gooders he had noticed, people, especially good people, were precious hard to find. He looked up in time to see her loosing her balance.

"Woah there..." he reached out an arm, the wrong arm, and she slipped, falling to her knees.

"Damn" he hissed and cradled his wrist, well, his wrist-stump.

"Oh," she sprung up again, peering at his arm.

"Oh, I can help!" and with that she turned, listed first right, then left, and set off into the woods.

"Damn" he muttered. This girl was goin' to be trouble. He could tell already. Still, he didn't want to be in the clearing with the dead bodies, attracted walkers.

He walked in a straight line, predator and prey. The trees were more regular here, planted in rows, not all random like. He could hear the girl crashing through the brush, if she had been bigger he would have worried about walkers, but as it was, they would be more likely to scope out the fresh blood. As he followed the noise he let his mind wander again, his solitude seemed to foster this introspection.

Merle honestly didn't know what to do. This was, perhaps, as close as he'd ever gotten to an existential dilemma. Daryl was his brother, the only family he had, and the only person he had ever felt responsible for. He loved Daryl, he'd never tell him that, he wasn't a pussy, still, he loved his brother and he didn't like leaving him with those do gooders. Do gooders got them selves killed. Do gooders got those around them killed too. None of the PTA, town council soccer moms would be able to put down someone that got bit. Sure, they might be able to cuff him and leave him, but he was a red neck, not one of their own. He knew they had seen him as a treat from the moment they met. Soon as someone they cared about got bit all bets would be off. They'd drag their sorry, decomposing, biting, murderous corpses around till someone got else got killed.

He looked up from his musing, only to see Gwenhwyfar Cordelia Aberdeen, tits out, well in a bra, but still, running towards him, holding a muddy, straggly bunch of plants. She pushed him onto a fallen log, her hands never seeming to still as she flitted around.

"Tarragon and Thyme, both said to have anti-viral and anti-microbial purposes. Don't suppose you should eat them, I mean you could..." She trailed off, tapping patterns and making calculations on her fingers.

"Plantain, comfrey and chickweed for burns and swelling. With that, she ripped the bottom half of her shirt, no small feet for a pixie, he thought. She put some of the leaves into the middle, in what looked like a very bland, very expensive salad at some Michelin star restaurant, then proceeded to beat the everliving shit out of it.

Gwenhwyfar wasn't stupid, she knew that trusting the murderous redneck was probably not her best idea, but, then again, he had saved her life and it was the apocalypse. She hadn't noticed his hand, which was stupid of her, as it was really hard not to notice. The fact remained, he was certainly a murder, but she had been running around with nothing but her bra and pants, so rapist was probably out of the question. If he was a cannibal, surly he would have gone for one of the bigger men he had killed, rather than following her. She was sure she couldn't take him in a fair fight, after all, she had seen him kill those two men. She also knew how sore his arm was. If she dug her nails in and then ran, she might stand a chance. Guinevere, Gwen, didn't feel safe per-say, but it was the closest she had come in months.

Lost in her musings she whacked her thumb with the heel of her shoe she was using to mash the herbs. She smirked, if only her mother could see her now.

"What ya doin' girly?" Merle peered down at her

"I um, I minored in mediaeval studies, and we did a unit in medicine and their theories. New thought I would have to use it, but I never thought a lot of things..." She trailed off, her large hazel eyes going glassy with tears. She blinked, shuddered and turned back towards him.

"Hold our your, um...your arm" she sent a little prayer and slapped the compress on the taught pink flesh.

"You cauterized it." She smiled, "Very clever." He raised and eyebrow, staring at her. She blushed, and backed away a few paces.

"We ain't all like them two you met girly, some of us ain't bin inbreeding long enough, still a bit of brain there" the corner of his mouth twisted up, enough to let her know he wasn't mad.

She blushed again, feeling silly and ungrateful, "Sorry, you're right. Still it was very clever." She thought about asking him how he'd lost it, but that seemed very personal and she had enough fodder for her nightmares to last her a lifetime, the last thing was a 27 hours horror story to keep her awake. She looked up at him, he had a hard, lined face, a face the brooked no argument. He looked tough, the kind of man she would cross the street to avoid, but now, comparative to the dead and the living she had encountered, he was looking like a good alternative.

"So..." she trailed off

"So, where you headed girly?" the compress helped some and she seemed harmless enough. Merle's brain was suddenly whirring. Daryl would hopefully want him back, but the other do-gooders would certainly like to see him dead. But if he turned up with the little lady, someone who could explain that he had saved her, that he was reliable enough to rejoin, well then his problems could be solved. Failing that, he could use her as a bargaining chip, try and play off the groups sympathies to get Daryl and some supplies in exchange for her.

He had missed the beginning of her talking, lost in his own plotting, he shook his head, hoping he had been looking engaged. Now that he needed her, to get Daryl, he had to keep her with him, and that would be easier if he didn't have to truss her up.

"...my PhD advisor, but my little sister lives near Atlanta so I was going to get her, but then all the bodies, the blood and the smell, so I skirted around. Fat lot of good it did me."

She clambered up next to him on the log. Merle grabbed her chin, tilting it up to look in her eyes.

"You feelin' alright girly?"

"No" she murmured, and for the second time in an hour, threw up.

thank-you BDFHRTH for your review-it pushed me to go and post this


	3. Chapter 3

"Look ere girly" He was gruff, but his fingers on her chin were warm. Gwen focused on drowning out the pounding in her head long enough to look up.

"Let me see yer eyes" She opened her eyelids as far as she could, stemming another wave of nausea.

"You got a concussion sure as damn it, did one of em bastards bang yer 'ead upside a tree or someit?" She nodded and wrenched again.

"Sit still 'en. You gotta stay awake thought, so just keep talking." Her face, already pale had drained of all color.

"They grabbed me, and they would have, they would have, oh God!" Gwen could sense Merle moving around, he slid off the log to sit beside her.

"Hey, Hey now. None of that ya hear. It'll attract the geeks. Now, I'll get you all patched up and you'll stop all that snivelin' alright." Although his words were assertive, it was obvious that a crying assault victim put him so far out of his depth he might have been in the marianas trench.

Gwen gave a watery giggle and nodded, even though it made her head throb. Merle motioned for her to lean forward. As she did her removed what was left of her white silk shirt. Gwen stiffened, not sure what would be coming next, but he only began ripping it into strips.

"So Merle," she grimaced as he bound a particularly nasty gash, "How do you know about concussions?"

Merle sat silent, shredding more strips of cloth. He rubbed one between his fingers, lost in though. Gwen was just about to apologize for asking when he opened his mouth. He considered, shrugged and began.

"I was in high school, well, I was enrolled en high school, didn't do much on ta attendin end, but anyways I was 'bout eighteen, I went out fer the weekend. It was just me en Pa en Darylina then so 'e must ta been about elven. So I ghet back from my weekend en what do I find, but no Pa en little Darylina sittin on the stoop with 'is eyes all glassy en unfocused. Well he had a concussion, that was plain as day, en he was crying en wimperin' and bein' a little girl. So I knows he had to be kept awake, so we go inside, I make a good pot of coffee, and sit 'im down"

Gwen smiled, she had been an only child and her mother, well her mother had no maternal instincts to speak of. Having someone to watch your back, to be your mentor and your friend, that would have been lovely.

"So, little Daryl is drinkin' 'is coffee, which is thick and black as tar, en he's complain' all the way, but even then he starts noddin' off. So, I does what I have to, I start in on a good 'ol ghost story. I can't remember what it was 'bout but there was this guy with a bum leg en he made this ker-thumpin' noise when he walked. So he starts twitching and lookin' over 'is shoulder. Anyway, I tells 'im stories for a good few hours. Then I have ta ghet up to piss, I come back in and he's slumped over, almost asleep. So, I walk in all quite like, en I got my work boots on, I was doin' construction about that time. So I gots these thick boots on en I start draggin' the one leg 'hind ta other. He almost pissed himself. Poor lilly little Darylina."

Gwen smiled,

"So you two are close then?"

Merle looked away, his face in shadow.

"Na, I was quite a bit older then Daryl. I left home when I was sixteen. Spent a few years in en out-a juvie. Came back just long enough to see him about to high school then I cleared out and spent some time in the army."

Gwen nodded, shivering without her shirt. Merle pulled off his vest, throwing it round her shoulders.

"Thanks," He nodded. Gwen smiled, her eyes taking on a far away quality, "I ran away at fifteen. I saved up money. See, when I was away at boarding school and I started selling essays and homework, study guides and the like. I got about six hundred dollars and I bought a ticket to Phoenix and I was going to run away, go live with my Dad and Sally. There was an amber alert out on my by the end of the second day. I never got to Phoenix, but I did get a hell of a lecture."

Merle chuckled, "Woulda gotten a hiding in my family."

"I think I would have rather had the beating then the lecture. Anyway after that, I just waited, and as soon as I could I left. I applied to Oxford, in England, they gave me a Rhodes scholarship and then I did my grad work at MIT."

Merle whistled, "Damn mama, yer one clever bitch."

Gwen shrugged, "So it would seem, then again, why am I here?"

Merle shrugged, "yer guess is as good as mine." then, after an uncomfortable pause he asked,

"What did you study?" Merle wasn't terribly interested, he would listen, but then he had to. She needed ta like 'im, ta trust 'im if she was gonna tell the do-gooders what a reformed saint he was. So he asked.

"I minored in mediaeval studies, but I double majored in pre-med and bio-chemical engineering. When I went to grad school I got my Phd in the engineering. I took a few med classed is school, got my paramedics license, that sort of thing. I was going to get my sister, once I graduated, and we were going to move somewhere else, just the two of us. Maybe travel, you know, see the world."

Merle nodded, he could understand that, the need to leave, coupled with the desire to save the only other person in the world that understood what had happened to you.

"What was er name?" Merle was whittling a spare bit of wood, balancing it with his stump against his knee.

"Sally. She was only my half sister, but we wrote to each other a lot. She's dead now. I mean, I didn't see her, but I just know. Like you know that Daryl is alive I know that Sally didn't make it out. She loved people. We both got the helping gene, me, I wanted to be a neurosurgeon, but MIT gave me a free ride for the engineering so...But Sally, Sally was one of those people who works with abuse victims. She was a social worker so she would have been right in the thick of it. I never had the heart for it. She could keep that distance, but me, I cried over worms on the side walk, cats and squirrels by the side of the road, even other people's pets. My mother had be sent to a psychologist."

Gwen looked upset now, her wide mouth downturned, her eyes hooded. Merle weighed his options and decided that now was the time to lie, well, to lie out loud.

"I've seen it, it's fast, she wouldna felt much pain."

Gwen smiled, a little sadly,

"Yes, yes she would have. The fever cleans you out, makes every nerve feel like it's burning. I can only hope that maybe there would have been someone to put her down."

They sat in silence for a while before Gwen spoke again.

"So, are you going to leave me?"

Merle shrugged, "Naw, I like you now, yer funny. Sides, I need another hand." She grimaced at the poor joke but he continued, "I got a car not far from here, we can travel together, find Daryl and the others." Gwen nodded, smiling her too big smile again.

"I need to get to my car as well. It's the other side of the orchard. We can scope out the farm house too, but I think the car is the best bet."

Merle wanted to tell her that the men, her would be rapists, had probably cleared out the car, but he didn't. They could check quickly, and maybe there would be some food in the farmhouse. He nodded.

Gwen smiled, her eyes looking darker, chocolate flecked with forest green and tiny specks of gold.

"You sleep, I've got to stay awake anyway, who knows what's out there, or in here for the matter, she added, tapping her own head."

Merle nodded, leaning back against the log. Although he had no intentions of sleeping, he did.


End file.
